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LMGI COMPASS
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Winter 2021
Perry Mason (Matthew Rhys) and Lupe Gibbs
(Veronica Falcón) at Rancho Camulos.
Photo courtesy of HBO
find the right farmhouse, but we also needed a property that had
the space to support an airstrip that was suitable to land the
prop planes safely. We looked everywhere, as far north as San
Luis Obispo and as far south as San Diego and San Bernardino
to the east.
"We eventually landed in Thousand Oaks with some help
from the Ventura County Film Office. The property we picked
was in the agricultural zone of Ventura County, which meant we
had to pull a conditional use permit that would require public
hearings and could take a year or longer to get, which we didn't
have time for. We had to scale back the design and impact of
the airstrip to keep our use within the perimeters of what is
normally allowed in a filming permit. Our original intent was
to have planes land and take off practically, but we cut back
because of the additional permitting requirements. In the end,
we were able to find a compromise with the county that allowed
us to still achieve what we needed."
Kinney recalls, "When we had a hard time finding Mason's
farm from the start, Alexander sent me to a specific place that
came to mind in Thousand Oaks to scout. Until then, we had
both scouted for weeks without a real true contender that
could work. This place became Mason's farm, which also had
many hurdles from the county/city to film the nascent airstrip
next to Mason's farm, where Lupe (Veronica Falcón) is supposed
to have planes actively flying in and out of the airstrip."
Radiant Assembly of God Church: Where evangelist Sister Alice
McKeegan€(Tatiana Maslany), channeling Aimee Semple McPherson,
preaches to hordes of followers.
Kinney says, "The church had
three components, the exterior and the interior lobby and the
main hall. The exterior and lobby I found in West Adams near USC
(The Art of Living Center, formerly the Second Church of Christ,
Scientist). It had those big pillars and a nice look. The interior
hall was another piece we'd been chasing for some time. Dennis
Morley/LMGI tracked down the Trinity Auditorium Building in
DTLA that hadn't been filmed in for more than 15 years and was
being developed into a boutique hotel. The main hall still had
many architectural elements from the period."
"It was still a pretty big build, and we shot all the scenes for
the whole show together in a block," co-executive producer
Aida Rodgers adds. "We had over 450 extras each day, and they
were like a drop in the bucket for the size of the space. There
was a choir plus all the people working in the church. How
would we fill the church with enough people? How could
we even try to dress thousands of extras to fill every space?
Ultimately, VFX supervisor Justin Ball took pictures of the
